What are the Main Issues causing so many Controversies over at LMG?

[adiack]

I want to preface this topic by saying that I like LMG ,Respect what they do and am a subscriber on floatplane (and do not intend to change that).

There has been allot of scandals at LMG over couple of  years.

From the Backpack warranty to beef with so many youtubers (e.g Pokimane)

What has been causing all these scandals as LMG did not used to have anywhere near as many.

Is it an issue (witch linus seems to have said about before with him not even wanting the company to be this big) of  Linus not real being in the mind set / best suited to be the CEO a operation worth 10s of Millions of dollars. As he still acts in many cases as if it is much smaller. Is the wan show becoming to dangerous for their brand I don’t know.

 

What I can say is it a very interesting study into how companies go from the being seen as the nice scrapy underdog to the big souls corporation ( as LTT is beginning to look from the outside) with in sensitive cash Grabs like the trust me bro t-shirt (witch I found really funny but would have not stood for many companies doing).

 

What do you guys think?

 (please keep it civil)

 

(Edit) TLDR

-Ltt should Bring the wan show (as it is one of the main culprits) back to being mainly about news rather then ltt store and merch messages.

-Linus should listen to Luke more.

[bezza...]

one thing that really annoys me is that it seams like more and more the wan show has become a big advertisement for ltt merch. they spend so much of it discussing the backpack or screwdriver and a myriad of other things. 

[adiack]

1 minute ago, Tomberry said:

one thing that really annoys me is that it seams like more and more the wan show has become a big advertisement for ltt merch. they spend so much of it discussing the backpack or screwdriver and a myriad of other things. 

part of the issue i gues as a fan is i dont care i could listen to linus and luke talk about editing a spread sheet of there daily bred intake and i would still be on cloud fricking nine. this blocks me from having a proper view on what they do so i am always suprised when people are pissed  of about things.

 

What i do think is Linus should probably listen to luke more often.

 

[Arika]

Linus on the wan show is the main issue

 

He's a bit to quick to speak without thinking. He's great as a presenter, but it always seems to stem from something he said on the wan show off the cuff.

[adiack]

i think there is also a issue of linus not being able to sepperate any grevences with LMG and grivences with him personaly

[adiack]

1 minute ago, Arika S said:

Linus on the wan show is the main issue

 

He's a bit to quick to speak without thinking. He's great as a presenter, but it always seems to stem from something he said on the wan show off the cuff.

the issue is it is live stream and he has to keep talking otherwise people stop watching. i cant realy see a way to solve the issue of being the CEO of a now massive company

[Middcore]

Pokimane? 

[adiack]

3 minutes ago, Middcore said:

Pokimane? 

he had beath with pokimane over her comments about twitch changing there ad policy. it was actualy a example of one of the issues. LMG now has skin in loads of games

cloathing, streaming , video production , writen media production , laptops, expos and more

[Arika]

7 minutes ago, adiack said:

the issue is it is live stream and he has to keep talking otherwise people stop watching. i cant realy see a way to solve the issue of being the CEO of a now massive company

So have more than 2 hosts to carry on conversations, or go back to being a more structured show without the massive downtime between topics. Do less merch messages, too much time is dedicated to answering questions that they were not prepared for which can lead to weird shit being said.

 

Wan show used to be a news show. Now it's a paid q&a show with some news.

[adiack]

1 minute ago, Arika S said:

So have more than 2 hosts to carry on conversations, or go back to being a more structured show without the massive downtime between topics. Do less merch messages, too much time is dedicated to answering questions that they were not prepared for which can lead to weird shit being said.

 

Wan show used to be a news show. Now it's a paid q&a show with some news.

i dont think 2 hosts is the sollution because the main reason wan shows exists still with how it affects ther channel is it being dedicated Linus and Luke time.

 

but yes it hink they defintly should have far less time talking about anything related to LTT or answering questions (mush as i enjoy the behind the scenes) as it is such a mine field

[WildDagwood]

On 8/25/2022 at 12:22 PM, adiack said:

i dont think 2 hosts is the sollution because the main reason wan shows exists still with how it affects ther channel is it being dedicated Linus and Luke time.

 

but yes it hink they defintly should have far less time talking about anything related to LTT or answering questions (mush as i enjoy the behind the scenes) as it is such a mine field

Nah, I kind of agree with them. Doesn't have to be permanent additions either. They could have some other staff rotate in at times for various topics, giving fresh faces and perspectives. Linus and Luke would still be the main hosts, but I know some community members are always lobbying for certain staff to get more screen time.

[wanderingfool2]

On 8/25/2022 at 8:57 AM, adiack said:

Linus should listen to Luke more.

This I agree with, I think a lot of the time Luke seems to be more understanding/empathetic than Linus.

 

On 8/25/2022 at 8:57 AM, adiack said:

What I can say is it a very interesting study into how companies go from the being seen as the nice scrapy underdog to the big souls corporation ( as LTT is beginning to look from the outside) with in sensitive cash Grabs like the trust me bro t-shirt (witch I found really funny but would have not stood for many companies doing).

 

What do you guys think?

Honestly, there are multiple things that have all accumulated to where it is.

 

I think there is very much a "can't see the forest through the trees" going on at LMG.  Linus talks about growing the company, and supporting with good wages to the employees.  That of course needs additional revenue to fund that sort of thing, I truly think an issue with that though is that you can only go so far in the "tech" industry.  There is only so much money to go around, so to speak (unless expanding out into merch and stuff).

 

So eventually it all becomes about hitting the numbers, and making sure to get a higher stream of income to be able to support the current employees and keep expanding.  Which I think is where the forest through the trees comes into play.  While the intentions might be good, I think they have gotten so focused on a specific goals and growth that they have now lost that family touch.

 

I'm not against merchandise messaging, but I do agree that there is too much talk about it on the WAN show (and broken up in it).  I remember when the WAN show was done in the garage when it seemed like it wasn't about bringing in the money.

 

For the recent controversies, I think it's a general hubris thing on Linus' part.  I mean he says he didn't handle the Naomi Wu stuff on twitter correctly (the response of "reputation is impeccable" was his cringe twitter response), but in that same WAN show he talks about reputation and knowing what the company is about [this occurred on the same wan show].

 

At a certain point, using "reputation" as an excuse wears on people.  Sure people might trust him, but the whole "trust me" vibe and then saying if something happens he doesn't want people to have to deal with it...that is a good way to burn off the trust.  In general I don't think the "reputation" is a good way to position yourself when it comes to people asking why something isn't provided.  (e.g. if it was said, we'll have a basic warranty but we have a history of warrantying items that fall outside of the warranty because we trust our products).  It still says the "trust me" but says  trust me that I will go above and beyond what I'm guaranteeing (which is a lot more acceptable).

 

The trust me bro t-shirt I think is where I really draw the line in terms of this whole LMG thing (and where I won't ever consider purchasing a product ever from LMG unless things change).  He says very few dozen people cancelled the backpack order and uses that as a confirmation.  If I were to have purchased a backpack, I wouldn't have cancelled my order...but that doesn't mean I would purchase things again.  I was seriously willing to dropping money on the screwdriver once it was sold and people gave their feedback, but I'm not going to even consider that now.

 

The tl;dr I think think it's a mixture of a multiple things getting to big, focus on expanding, and Linus' hubris

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

13 hours ago, WildDagwood said:

Nah, I kind of agree with them. Doesn't have to be permanent additions either. They could have some other staff rotate in at times for various topics, giving fresh faces and perspectives. Linus and Luke would still be the main hosts, but I know some community members are always lobbying for certain staff to get more screen time.

Honestly the best streams in my opinion were the ones with guests in them So the one with Josh from Fractal Design, or JJ from ASUS for instance, those are the ones I remember. The WAN show these days are quite forgettable. You're honestly not missing much if you skip one entirely as others have mentioned, the show has less to do with tech and more about LMG, merch, and drama in general as much as they say they don't partake in those conversations. They most certainly do, don't let them gaslight you into believe that they don't. Especially recently when they keep being in the centre of it. 

[YellowJersey]

This is the internet, where people love to be angry all the time and will look for any reason to be angry. The way people react to even the tiniest thing is ridiculous to the point of meaninglessness. Lots of mountains out of mole hills. People need to take a chill pill. 

[ToboRobot]

In part it is an issue of scale.  Bigger the organization and it's reach, the more issues that will occur.

It's also a function of social media and an influencer with a platform attracting people who want attention.

And then there is people.

[Guest]

I think the fact that Linus is a towel would have a pretty big impact. 

 

 

[Anghammarad]

my part on this, well yes as CEO you need to be more "Lawyer filtered" when speaking.

 

But we all are here due to what LMG was and is today. I personally had no "worries" about a warranty with the backpack for example, even with ordering from germany, which puts many bucks on top the price.

 

I like the personalities, I like the openness, and heck, if there aren't enough topcis for WAN, why not put in Merch Infos... It isn't like Tele Shopping... 

 

To be real honest, if the open talking and realness would be lawyered away, this would be a really dark time. 

 

So less snowflakey. Less offendi. More accepti. =) 

[adiack]

1 hour ago, Anghammarad said:

my part on this, well yes as CEO you need to be more "Lawyer filtered" when speaking.

 

But we all are here due to what LMG was and is today. I personally had no "worries" about a warranty with the backpack for example, even with ordering from germany, which puts many bucks on top the price.

 

I like the personalities, I like the openness, and heck, if there aren't enough topcis for WAN, why not put in Merch Infos... It isn't like Tele Shopping... 

 

To be real honest, if the open talking and realness would be lawyered away, this would be a really dark time. 

 

So less snowflakey. Less offendi. More accepti. =) 

this is a good point

[Neroon]

It's simple, their business does not match their professionalism.

 

If you look at their business, you would expect a very professional company, multiple channels, 80 employees, a platform that is supposed to draw in other professionals etc.

Yet the CEO struggles with people expecting the company to be professional. He wants to run it the way he wants, and if he wants to throw a hissy fit, he will, if he doesn't want to offer warranty, he won't. Of course he gets called out and changes happen, but you can tell he doesn't like it.

 

Him being real makes him both a great personality, but also a problematic CEO, at least to the public eye.

So with the backpack, yeah I agree with him on a personal level, their word and willingness to offer good support, is arguably much more important than what is written down. At the same time when you sell 250 dollar backpacks with millions of revenue in weeks, you need to be professional and get your warranty in order. Not because their intentions aren't important, but because your word is worthless if it's changed. And yes he obviously values his word over anything in this world, but the customer wants that in writing when they fork over 250 bucks.

 

Linus knows how big his company has gotten,  but I don't think he fully realizes that he needs to be professional towards certain stuff. No it doesn't mean everything needs to be filtered, that he has to stop doing the WAN, it means he needs to talk things over with some things. So if things come up whether it be on WAN, forums or else, that effects the company in a fundamental way, he needs to just say: "I'll discuss this internally and let you know", to then proceed to talk with the upper management to see what would make sense. His response then doesn't need to be written by a lawyer, and it doesn't need to be something all of us like, but he does need to think about it and accept feedback.

 

Personally I don't think a lawyer/PR personr or whatever is gonna helpful in general, obviously with a written warranty you want a lawyer to write that up, but aside from that, he just needs to use common sense and allow room for feedback BEFORE making big decisions.

 

As for the many other things people complain about, honestly it's irrelevant. By all means feedback is important, so people should give it, even if they ignore it. But complaining constantly about clickbait, or how they make money, or them openly talking about how much money things cost etc, that's honestly fairly pointless. They made their decision, they know the up and down sides of those decisions, and they are fine with their choice.

It's also very much preference,  because I like them talking about how much things have cost and how their financials are, don't get me wrong, I give 0 shits about how much his pool is, and honestly I don't see why he talks about that, but hey that's up to him. But with the Lab, products etc, it is helpful to understand what they are working on. Whether it's a failure or success, nobody can say that they aren't investing shitloads and taking a big risk, all for hopefully reliable independent content. 

Doubting what they do is fine, but their openness is afaik to build trust, to show how serious they are.

 

Probably the most common complaint I see, is about the information in the videos, that it doesn't go in depth enough, that they cater to the average person, and I don't disagree. But that's why people need to understand why investing millions and millions is being done to offer the in depth information, in their videos and outside of it. This is them clearly saying: "we want to offer better information".

 

Don't agree with how they do it? That's completely fair, but this is how they decided to do it, and it's up to them how they want to do it, and it's up to us whether we want to check out their content.

 

I think the fact that we are discussing this here, myself included, is both a great strenght of this community, but also quite absurd that we are this involved in a company, especially since there are so many alternatives out there.

 

So my advice to everyone who posts about this stuff, myself included, is to ask yourself whether this really matters to you, and if it does, try and find out why, and if it's healthy.

[Anghammarad]

1 hour ago, adiack said:

this is a good point

I know... right?

 

(insert random Ryan Reynolds gif)

[LAwLz]

I think the problem is that Linus has an incredibly fragile ego and has always been very hostile towards those who question or criticize him. I mean, look at these posts he made towards me when I said I didn't like the blurred lines between "review" and "product showcase", him lying about testing methodology, him not disclosing sponsors, and a list of other fuckups that made me distrust him.

His replies were the same type of thing we saw with the backpack. He misses the points made, focuses on some irrelevant details, deflects things with "I am successful" or similar non-arguments, refuse to admit to mistakes and if none of those things work he just straight up responds with personal attacks and insults.

 

 

 

 

Linus never outgrew high school. It's just that more people have noticed it recently.

His attitude seems to work when running a company that's basically a channel for "redneck consumer electronics". Now that he is venturing into more serious territory with things like the lab and utility products that are priced as high of not higher than the leading brands with decades of experience, then people want a bit more professionalism and serious tone. Not a middle aged guy who behaves like a spoiled rich teenager.

 

 

Him having anxiety over things like the environmental harms while also constantly trying to push people to consume more and more products (as he described it in his "I'm thinking about retiring"), plus the mood altering medications he takes probably doesn't help either.

 

 

 

I don't think Linus is happy or feels that well right now, and I think a lot of that can be attributed to his obsession with growing his channel. As he said in his "I'm thinking about retiring" video, he questions if he has become like Walter White.

What started out as "I am doing it for my family, to provide for them" might have turned into "I am doing it because I like success, money and fame".

 

I think Linus would have had a more enjoyable life with far less anxiety and relationship issues if he had just slowed things down and not focused so much on growing his companies.

A Youtube channel that sell t-shirts and make short videos about consumer electronics doesn't need like 100 employees. They don't need to have a bunch of deadlines and internal goals for productivity. They don't need to create a billion different products and spend millions on some backpack where it seems like the entire fate of the company hinges on the backpack doing well. Him constantly talking about the finances of the company, even when it seems like jokes ("how much did I pay for this?" "you bought this with my money?" "hope you enjoy this, because I am paying for it") seems to me like the manifestation of a lot of anxiety he has.

 

 

The beast of a company he runs has grown to be a massive liability and responsibility, and he is trying to "fix" that by growing the company even more, but that just creates even more responsibility. 

 

When I watched LTT videos 10 years ago, I saw a fun dude who just was himself and seemed pretty content with life.

When I watched LTT videos 3 years ago I saw a guy who was putting on an act of being wacky and fun, but in reality was stressed and anxious.

When I watch LTT videos today I see a man who is so stressed and anxious that he can barely keep his act up 80% of the time, and it's those 20% that are resulting in controversies.

[Yoinkerman]

@LAwLz lol was that the disabling cpu cores to mimick CPUs and claiming games are tested on those other CPUs?  That was wild

[adiack]

1 hour ago, LAwLz said:

I think the problem is that Linus has an incredibly fragile ego and has always been very hostile towards those who question or criticize him. I mean, look at these posts he made towards me when I said I didn't like the blurred lines between "review" and "product showcase", him lying about testing methodology, him not disclosing sponsors, and a list of other fuckups that made me distrust him.

His replies were the same type of thing we saw with the backpack. He misses the points made, focuses on some irrelevant details, deflects things with "I am successful" or similar non-arguments, refuse to admit to mistakes and if none of those things work he just straight up responds with personal attacks and insults.

 

 

 

 

Linus never outgrew high school. It's just that more people have noticed it recently.

His attitude seems to work when running a company that's basically a channel for "redneck consumer electronics". Now that he is venturing into more serious territory with things like the lab and utility products that are priced as high of not higher than the leading brands with decades of experience, then people want a bit more professionalism and serious tone. Not a middle aged guy who behaves like a spoiled rich teenager.

 

 

Him having anxiety over things like the environmental harms while also constantly trying to push people to consume more and more products (as he described it in his "I'm thinking about retiring"), plus the mood altering medications he takes probably doesn't help either.

 

 

 

I don't think Linus is happy or feels that well right now, and I think a lot of that can be attributed to his obsession with growing his channel. As he said in his "I'm thinking about retiring" video, he questions if he has become like Walter White.

What started out as "I am doing it for my family, to provide for them" might have turned into "I am doing it because I like success, money and fame".

 

I think Linus would have had a more enjoyable life with far less anxiety and relationship issues if he had just slowed things down and not focused so much on growing his companies.

A Youtube channel that sell t-shirts and make short videos about consumer electronics doesn't need like 100 employees. They don't need to have a bunch of deadlines and internal goals for productivity. They don't need to create a billion different products and spend millions on some backpack where it seems like the entire fate of the company hinges on the backpack doing well. Him constantly talking about the finances of the company, even when it seems like jokes ("how much did I pay for this?" "you bought this with my money?" "hope you enjoy this, because I am paying for it") seems to me like the manifestation of a lot of anxiety he has.

 

 

The beast of a company he runs has grown to be a massive liability and responsibility, and he is trying to "fix" that by growing the company even more, but that just creates even more responsibility. 

 

When I watched LTT videos 10 years ago, I saw a fun dude who just was himself and seemed pretty content with life.

When I watched LTT videos 3 years ago I saw a guy who was putting on an act of being wacky and fun, but in reality was stressed and anxious.

When I watch LTT videos today I see a man who is so stressed and anxious that he can barely keep his act up 80% of the time, and it's those 20% that are resulting in controversies.

is not the fact you are saying this and many people are saying these freely on a forum owned by this company not in someways a testement to said company.

[Neroon]

3 hours ago, Neroon said:

So my advice to everyone who posts about this stuff, myself included, is to ask yourself whether this really matters to you, and if it does, try and find out why, and if it's healthy.

@LAwLz

Regardless of who is right or wrong, this ain't healthy.

[LAwLz]

4 hours ago, Yoinkerman said:

@LAwLz lol was that the disabling cpu cores to mimick CPUs and claiming games are tested on those other CPUs?  That was wild

No, it was some stuff like overclocking components without making it apparent (like maybe mentioning it on a WAN show but not in the video, or something along those lines), and also him claiming to have used some particular type of water during water cooling tests when he just used tap water. He didn't believe it would make a difference (which I am fairly sure he was right about) but he didn't want his claims challenged so he just lied to appease potential critics. That was a long time ago but he as as far as I know never admitted to it being bad, and that reveals quite a bit about his character if you ask me.

"I will lie to not have claims questioned if I believe I am right" is not a good character trait to have for someone who want to start publishing whitepapers and do serious testing, which is why I brought it up in the thread about LTT Labs. Linus did not like me bringing that up though.

 

Disabling cores to emulate other CPUs seems like a bad idea as well. It seems like you already know this but for those who don't, different CPUs has different interconnect layouts. In some cases, taking an 8 core and disabling 2 cores will make it perform just like a 6 core processor. In some cases, it doesn't. It depends on not just the particular CPU's interconnect architecture but also which particular program you run.

It's also just a bad idea in general to not tell the audience how things were tested.

 

 

4 hours ago, adiack said:

is not the fact you are saying this and many people are saying these freely on a forum owned by this company not in someways a testement to said company.

Absolutely.

I am glad Linus isn't deleting my posts. Wish he would respond to my posts like an adult and not a bad-tempered teenager but leaving the comments up is at least commendable. Then again, it is debatable how much credit someone should get for not doing something terrible. Just because you have the power to do something bad does not mean you should get praise for not abusing that power.

 

I wish the same could be said for all the negative reviews on their store they are deleting. Reviews like people saying their support is very slow and that because of incorrect handling of IOSS numbers you might end up having to pay tax twice when ordering to Europe. Those reviews have been deleted because LMG does not feel they are fair.

 

 

  

3 hours ago, Neroon said:

@LAwLz

Regardless of who is right or wrong, this ain't healthy.

What isn't healthy? Me commenting about Linus?

Trust me, I try to find more interesting topics but it is becoming harder and harder with each passing day. I wrote about it in a status update a few days ago. 6 out of the 7 threads I saw when I opened general discussion was about Linus. 

 

I tend to just go to this forum when I am bored and then post in some threads that interests me. Right now, there are very few threads that actually has any interesting discussion in them. There are hundreds of things that interest me way more than Linus and his channel, but since barely anyone talks about anything other than Linus right now I will join those discussions instead.

I guess in a sense this forum is like watching TV to me. If I am bored and turn on the TV, I will end up watching SOMETHING. That something might not be something that interests me, but if my choices are between Pawn Stars or Guiding Light then I will probably end up watching Pawn Stars (posting in these threads).

 

I guess another alternative would be to turn the TV off (not post at all), but staring at a blank TV screen is even less fun than watching a bad TV shown.